This Body of Death: An Inspector Lynley Novel

by Elizabeth George

  “How do you get from the ice rink to this job, Mr. Chaplin?”

  “I’ve a scooter,” he said.

  “Have you indeed?”

  “I do. And if you’re thinking that I’d’ve had the time to weave through traffic and make it up to Stoke Newington and then back here …Well, you best come with me.” Frazer rose, picking up a few more nuts and tossing them into his mouth. He had a brief word with Heinrich and then led the way out of the bar and out of the hotel as well.

  At the far end of the cul-de-sac that was St. James’s Place, Frazer Chaplin’s motor scooter stood. It was a Vespa, the sort of vehicle that zips up and down the streets of every major town in Italy. But unlike those scooters, this one was not only painted a violent and completely unforgettable lime green, it was also covered with bright red advertising transfers for a product called DragonFly Tonics, in effect becoming a mobile billboard not unlike those seen occasionally on black cabs round town.

  Chaplin said, “Would I be mad enough to take myself up to Stoke Newington on that? To leave it parked anywhere and then do a dash to kill Jemima? What d’you take me for, man, a fool? Would you be likely to forget you’d seen that thing parked hither or thither? I wouldn’t, and I doubt anyone else would either. Take a bloody photo of it if you want. Show it round up there. Go to every house and shop in every street there is, and you’ll see the truth of it.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That I bloody well didn’t kill Jemima.”

  When the police ask Ian Barker on tape, “Why did you make the baby naked?” he does not reply at first. His grandmother keens in the background, a chair scrapes the floor, and someone taps on the tabletop. “You know that baby was naked, don’t you? When we found him, he was naked. You know that, don’t you, Ian?” are the next questions, and they are followed by, “You yourself made him naked before you used the hairbrush on him. We know that because your fingerprints are on that hairbrush. Were you angry, Ian? Had Johnny done something to make you angry? Did you want to sort him out with the hairbrush?”

  Ian finally says, “I didn’t do nothing to that kid. You ask Reggie. You ask Mikey. Mikey was the one changed his nappy, anyways. He knew how. He got brothers. I don’t. And Reg was the one nicked the bananas, eh?”

  Michael says in response to the first mention of the hairbrush, “I never. I never. Ian told me he poohed. Ian said I was meant to change him. But I never,” and when asked about the bananas, he begins to cry. Ultimately he says, “It got poo on it, didn’t it. That baby was in the muck there on the ground…He was just laying there…,” whereupon his weeping turns to wailing.

  Reggie Arnold addresses his mother, as before, saying, “Mum, Mum, there wasn’t no hairbrush. I never made that baby naked. I never touched him. Mum, I never touched that baby. Mikey kicked him, Mum. See, he was on the ground and he was on his face cause…Mum, he must’ve fell. And Mikey kicked him.”

  When told of Reggie’s claim, following on the heels of Ian’s claims, Michael Spargo finally begins to tell the rest of the story in what is an attempt to defend himself against what he obviously sees as an effort on the part of the other two boys to shift blame upon him. He admits to using his foot on John Dresser, but he claims it was only to turn the baby over in order “to help him breathe right.”

  From this point forward, the excruciating details slowly come out: the blows to little John Dresser from the boys’ feet, the use of copper tubing upon him like swords or whips, and ultimately the discarded concrete blocks. Parts of the story, however—the exact details of what happened with the banana and the hairbrush, for example—Michael refuses to speak about altogether, and this silence about those two pieces of evidence remains when the other two boys are questioned as well. But the postmortem examination of John Dresser’s body, in addition to the level of the boys’ continued distress when the subject of the hairbrush comes up, indicates the sexual component of the crime just as its terrible ferocity substantiates the deep well of anger each boy called upon in the final moments of the toddler’s life.

  Once a confession was obtained from the boys, the Crown Prosecutors took the highly unusual and equally controversial decision not to present the full details of John Dresser’s antemortem injuries to the court during the subsequent trial. Their reasoning was twofold. First, they had not only the confessions but also the CCTV films, the eyewitness testimonies, and copious forensic evidence, all of which they believed established without doubt the guilt of Ian Barker, Michael Spargo, and Reggie Arnold. Second, they knew that Donna and Alan Dresser were going to be present for the trial, as was their right, and the CPS did not wish to exacerbate the parents’ agony by revealing to them the extent of the brutality that had been inflicted upon their child prior to and after his death. Wasn’t it enough, they reasoned, to learn one’s child—so recently out of infanthood—had been abducted, dragged across town, stripped naked, whipped with copper tubing, stoned with broken concrete, and dumped into an abandoned Port-a-Loo? Additionally, they had complete confessions from at least two of the boys (Ian Barker only going so far as admitting finally that he was in the Barriers that day and he saw John Dresser, before holding firm to, “Maybe I did something and maybe I didn’t,” for the rest of his interviews), and more than that seemed completely unnecessary for a conviction. It must be argued, however, that a third reason could well exist for the CPS’s silence on the matter of John Dresser’s internal injuries: Had these injuries become known, questions regarding the psychological state of his killers would have arisen, and these questions might have led the jury ineluctably towards manslaughter instead of murder because they would necessarily have been instructed to consider the 1957 Act of Parliament which declares that a person “shall not be convicted of murder if he was suffering from such abnormality of mind…as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts” at the time of the crime. Abnormality of mind are the key words here, and John’s further injuries do much to suggest deep abnormality on the part of all three of his killers. But a verdict of manslaughter would have been unthinkable, considering the climate in which the boys were tried. While the venue for the trial had been changed, the crime had gone from being a national story to an international story. Shakespeare declares that “blood will have blood,” and this situation was an example of that.

  Some have argued that when the boys stole the hairbrush from the Items-for-a-Pound shop in the Barriers, they knew full well what they were going to do with it. But to me, this suggests both reasoning and planning far beyond that of which they were capable. I don’t deny that perhaps my reluctance to believe in such a degree of premeditation is attached to a personal disinclination for considering the potential for pure iniquity to exist in the minds and hearts of ten-and eleven-year-old boys. Nor will I deny my preference for believing that the use of that hairbrush was the work of impulse. What I certainly will agree with is what the fact of that hairbrush illustrates about the boys: Those who abuse and violate have been abused and violated themselves, not once but repeatedly.

  When the hairbrush was brought up in interviews, it was a subject that not one of the boys was willing to talk about. On tape, their reactions vary, from Ian’s assertion that “wasn’t no hairbrush that I ever saw,” to Reggie’s attempt at innocence with, “Mikey might’ve nicked one from that shop but I don’t know that, do I,” and, “I never took no hairbrush, Mum. You got to believe I never would’ve took no hairbrush,” to Michael’s, “We didn’t have no hairbrush, we didn’t have no hairbrush, we didn’t, we didn’t,” which rises in what sounds like panic with every denial. When Michael is gently told, “You know one of you boys took that hairbrush, son,” he agrees that, “Reggie might’ve, then, but I didn’t see,” and “I don’t know what happened to it, do I.”

  It is only when the presence of the hairbrush at the Dawkins building site is brought up (along with the fingerprints upon it, in conjunction with the blood and the faecal matter on its handle) that the reactions of the b
oys escalate to their most emotive. Michael’s begins with, “I never…I told you and told you I didn’t…I didn’t take no hairbrush…there weren’t no hairbrush at all” and segues to “It were Reggie done it to that baby…Reggie wanted to…Ian took it from him…I said to stop and Reggie did it.” Reggie, on the other hand, addresses all his remarks to his mother, saying, “Mum, I never…I wouldn’t hurt no baby…Maybe I hit him once but I never…I took his snowsuit off him but it was all mucked up, that’s why…He were crying, Mum. I knew not to hurt him if he were crying.” During this, Rudy Arnold is silent, but Laura can be heard throughout, moaning, “Reggie, Reggie, what’ve you done to us?” as the social worker quietly asks her to drink some water, perhaps in an attempt to silence her. As for Ian, he finally begins to cry when the extent of John Dresser’s injuries are read to him. His grandmother can be heard weeping along with him and her words, “Sweet Jesus, save him. Save him, Lord,” suggest she’s accepted the boy’s culpability.

  It is at the point of the hairbrush’s introduction into the interviews—three days after the toddler’s body was found—that the boys confess fully to the crime. It is, perhaps, one of the additional horrors of the murder of John Dresser that when the perpetrators of this ghastly crime confessed, only one of them had a parent present. Rudy Arnold sat by his son throughout. Ian Barker had only his grandmother and Michael Spargo was accompanied only by social workers.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  WHOEVER HAD KILLED JEMIMA HASTINGS, AS THINGS TURNED out, was someone who’d worn a yellow shirt to do it. Lynley learned the details of this article of clothing upon his return to New Scotland Yard, where the team was meeting in the incident room and a photo of the shirt—now in the possession of forensics—was newly up on one of the china boards.

  Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata had arrived from the New Forest, Lynley saw, and he also saw from Barbara’s expression that she wasn’t happy about being recalled to London, blood-stained yellow shirt or not. She was fighting back a need to speak, which in her case meant fighting back a need to argue with the acting superintendent. Nkata, on the other hand, seemed acquiescent enough, displaying the easiness of disposition that had long been an integral part of his character. He lounged at the back of the room, sipping from a plastic cup. He nodded at Lynley and tilted his head towards Havers. He, too, knew she was itching to walk on the wrong side of whatever line Isabelle Ardery had drawn for her.

  “…still unconscious,” Ardery was saying. “But the surgeon indicates he’ll be brought round tomorrow. When that happens, he’s ours.” And to Lynley, bringing him fully into the picture, “The shirt was among the clobber in the Oxfam bin. It’s got a significant bloodstain on the front of it, right side, and on the right sleeve and cuff. It’s with forensics, but for the moment we’re assuming the blood is our victim’s. Agreed?” She didn’t wait for Lynley’s reply. “Right, then. Let’s put a few things together. We’ve two Oriental hairs in the victim’s hand, no defensive wounds on her, a pierced carotid artery, and a Japanese man in possession of the murder weapon and with her blood on his clothing. What’ve you got to add from today, Thomas?”

  For the team, Lynley recapped what he’d learned from Yolanda. He added for them, and for Isabelle as well, the details he’d had off Abbott Langer, the bartender Heinrich, and Frazer Chaplin. He knew he was about to devastate Isabelle’s position, but there was no way round it: He concluded by saying, with a nod at the large photo of the shirt, “I think we have two individuals interacting with Jemima in Abney Park Cemetery, guv. There was nothing in Matsumoto’s wardrobe even vaguely resembling that shirt. He wears black and white—not bright colours—and even if that weren’t the case, the clothing he had on that day, a tuxedo, was itself stained with her blood, as you’ve just said. He can’t have been wearing both the tuxedo and the yellow shirt. So with yet another article of clothing bloodstained and with Jemima going to the cemetery to speak with a man, we’ve got two blokes there instead of one.”

  “That’s how I’ve got it figured,” Barbara Havers put in quickly. “So, guv, it seems to me that recalling Winnie and me to London—”

  “One bloke to kill her and the other to …what?” John Stewart asked.

  “To watch over her, I suspect,” Lynley said. “Something at which Matsumoto, seeing himself as her guardian angel, failed miserably.”

  “Hang on, Thomas,” Ardery said.

  “Hear me out,” Lynley replied. He saw her eyes widen slightly and he knew she wasn’t pleased. He was going in a completely different direction, and God knew she had very good reason for the investigation’s maintaining its progress towards Matsumoto as the killer. “A bloke met her there to hear her hard truths,” Lynley said. “We’ve got this from the psychic and, her profession aside, I think she’s to be believed. If we ignore all Yolanda’s additional maundering about Jemima and the house in Oxford Road, she’s merely relating to us her own encounters with the woman. So from her we know that a man in Jemima’s life needed to hear something and Yolanda suggested a ‘place of peace’ for their meeting. Jemima knew about the cemetery, as she’d been photographed there. That was the spot she chose.”

  “With Matsumoto just happening to be there?” Ardery demanded.

  “He likely followed her.”

  “All right. But let’s assume this wasn’t the only time he followed her. Why would it have been? Why only on this particular day? That makes no sense. So if he was stalking her, he likely was the man who needed to hear the hard truths, those being leave me alone or I’ll have you for stalking. But he anticipates this is the way the conversation will go and, like all mad stalkers, he’s come with a weapon. Yellow shirt or not, bloodstained tuxedo or not, how do you explain that weapon in his possession, Thomas?”

  “How do you explain the blood on two kinds of clothing?” John Stewart put in.

  Glances were exchanged among the others present. It was his tone. He was taking sides. Lynley didn’t want this. It was not his intention to turn the investigation into a political intrigue. He said, “He sees her meet someone in the cemetery. They decamp to the chapel annex for a more private word.”

  “Why?” Isabelle asked. “They’re already in a private spot. Why does it need to be more private?”

  “Because whoever she’s there to meet is there to kill her,” Havers put in. “So he makes the request. ‘Let’s go over there. Let’s go in that building.’ Guv, we need to—”

  Lynley held up a hand. “Perhaps they’re arguing. One of them gets up, begins to pace. The other follows. They go inside but only the killer emerges. Matsumoto sees this. He waits for Jemima to come out as well. When she doesn’t, he goes to investigate.”

  “For God’s sake, wouldn’t he notice the other bloke had blood on his shirt?”

  “He may have done. Perhaps that’s why he went to investigate. But I think it’s more likely that the other bloke would have taken that shirt off and stowed it. He’d have to have done so. He can’t leave the cemetery with blood all over him.”

  “Matsumoto did.”

  “Which is what suggests to me that he didn’t kill her, not that he did.”

  “This is bollocks,” Ardery said.

  “Guv, it isn’t,” Havers broke in, and her tone declared she was serious this time. She would be heard and damn the consequences. “There’s something not right in Hampshire. We need to get back there. Winnie and I—”

  “Oh you two lovebirds,” John Stewart put in.

  Lynley said automatically, “That’ll do, John,” forgetting his return from acting superintendent to inspector.

  “Sod off,” Havers told Stewart, undeterred. “Guv, there’s more to be looked into in the New Forest. This bloke Whiting … ? Something’s not right about him. There’re contradictions all over the place.”

  “Such as?” Isabelle asked.

  Havers began leafing through her disaster of a notebook. She shot a look at Winston, saying Get involved here, mate. Winston stirred and came to
her aid. “Jossie’s not what he seems, guv,” he said. “He and Whiting are connected somehow. We’ve not got to the root of things, but the fact that Whiting knew ’bout Jossie’s apprenticeship suggests to us—to Barb an’ me—that he was behind Jossie getting it in the first place. An’ that suggests he forged those letters from the technical college. We can’t see who else might’ve done it.”

  “For God’s sake, why would he do that?”

  “Could be Jossie’s got something on him,” Nkata said. “We don’t know what. Yet.”

  Havers said, “But we could find out if you’d let us—”

  “You’ll stay here in London as you’ve been ordered.”

  “But, guv—”

  “No.” And to Lynley, “It’s just as easy to work this the other way round, Thomas. She meets Matsumoto in the cemetery. She goes with Matsumoto into the chapel annex. They have their words, he uses the weapon on her, and he flees. The other, wearing a yellow shirt, sees this. He goes into the annex. He comes to her aid but she has a wound that’s beyond aid. He gets her blood on him. He panics. He knows how this is going to look once his history with Jemima comes to light. He knows the cops look hard at whoever first comes upon the victim and reports it, and he can’t afford that. So he runs.”

  “And then what?” John Stewart asked. “He puts that shirt in McHaggis’s Oxfam bin? Along with the handbag? And what about the handbag? Why take it?”

  “Could be Matsumoto took the handbag. Could be he put it in the bin. He’d want to cast blame, to muddy the waters.”